Coping with Uncertainty: Normative Approaches, Current Practice

May 22-24, 2017, Paris.

Photo by Zsuzsanna Nagy

In a wide range of human domains – from reaction to climate change, energy policy, regulations of new technologies, economic policy – decisions are dogged by extreme uncertainties. How should one decide in the face of such uncertainties? How should they be represented, and indeed measured, to best aid informed decision making?

These questions are relevant in many different domains, but so far they have dealt with these uncertainties in relative isolation. There is little interaction among risk analysts’ methods, engineers’ techniques, decision theorists’ models, philosopher’s analyses, not to mention the relevant domains of statistics, environmental economics, or the practice concerning uncertainty representation and communication in climate science or the nuclear energy sector. The aim of this workshop is to bring together practitioners and researchers from some of these fields around the two central questions posed above.

The hope will be that by fostering the discussion and confrontation of results, methods and practices, this workshop will contribute to a better understanding of the affinities and divergences among the approaches dominant in different sectors, and ultimately to the development of more unified and robust approach to the challenges posed by uncertainty.

This page contains recordings of the talks and discussions that took place at this workshop.